Peter Bogdanovich is no stranger to violence -- either onscreen or off. In an eerie foreshadowing of the Colorado tragedy, his very first film, 1968's Targets, starring Boris Karloff, ends with a sniper, an angry Vietnam War vet, picking off teenagers at a drive-in movie theater. But while that movie reflected the rising discord of the late '60s, it wasn't until 1980 that Bogdanovich experienced, first-hand, the full impact of violence when his companion, Dorothy Stratten, the Playboy model and actress, was brutally murdered by her estranged husband.

People go to a movie to have a good time, and they get killed. It's a horrible, horrible event. It makes me sick that I made a movie about it.

(snip)

Today, there's a general numbing of the audience. There's too much murder and killing. You make people insensitive by showing it all the time. The body count in pictures is huge. It numbs the audience into thinking it's not so terrible. Back in the '70s, I asked Orson Welles what he thought was happening to pictures, and he said, "We're brutalizing the audience. We're going to end up like the Roman circus, live at the Coliseum." The respect for human life seems to be eroding.

We mustn’t dare say that! They’ll accuse us of wanting censorship. I would call it common sense. Movies to affect people, especially young people. I can remember acting out movies as kids. But I haven’t seen any of the Batman movies (though I used to love the TV show), so I can’t comment on them.

Peter Bogdanovich as Captain Obvious. Yes, I thought of “Targets” hearing of this recent incident. In the film the perp shoots into the audience from behind the screen at a drive-in theater, a highly symbolic and deeply thoughtful from the point of view of film history, scene.

As a fan of movies, heavy metal music and a video gamer since the Atari 2600 days, it seems obvious that what we view/play will effect our views/perceptions. In today’s culture where actions are free from consequense, it’s also unsurprising that people feel free to act on impuls in a morality free way.

So what changed and why didn’t kids from the 40s-80s go psycho every week after all the ultraviolent gangster movies, loony tunes cartoons etc?

Well, first and foremost, PARENTS taught the concept of right and wrong...and they weren’t arrested or recipients of CPS ‘love’ for doing so. Kids went to church. Kids could act out their fantasies playing cops and robbers/cowboys and indians/army et all, without CPS and a team of teachers, psychologists-psychiatrists and the rest ‘reeducating’ them for simply playing childhood games.

Why are kids in front of the TV watching R movies and playing M rated games all day? Could it be that every time they go outside they have to navigate a PC world they have no clue of understanding (as it changes by the second), the EPA and ‘safety’ groups outlawed anything resembling ‘fun’ on public lands...

EVERY BIT of this issue is 100% the responsibility of liberalism. ALL OF IT. It all goes back to the same source.

I think we all realize that ‘whatever a man sows, that he also reaps.’ Or what goes around, comes around.
The year after Bambi came out hunting licenses dropped by 60% across America. (If my memory recall is accurate.) Movies do make an impact. It is ‘nice’ to know that some acknowledge that.

I feel sorry for kids now - most of them never get to have a “kid life”. Gone are the days when you were just shooed out of the house on Saturday mornings to run around and play, make friends, fight, fall and scrape your knees, whatever.

Liberals closed the asylums and opened the prison doors. Their lawyers made everyone sue-happy and at the same time staunchly defended the thugs & creeps. Liberal parenting (I blame Dr. Spock) has led to a generation of spoiled brats. The liberal state has tried to replace fathers and religion.

EVERY BIT of this issue is 100% the responsibility of liberalism. ALL OF IT. It all goes back to the same source

Movies, music, media has enormous INFLUENCE on all walks of life, but they don't FORCE anyone to do anything. No one makes that distinction. There isn't some all powerful OZ puppeteer reaching out from each movie screen forcing anyone to go do anything. If it isn't movies influencing, it's video games. If it isn't video games influencing, it's books. If it isn't books influencing, it's paintings and art, if it isn't art.....etc etc etc. The weak and evil minded will always be influenced and latch onto something.

As you explained, shouldn't we be blaming the whole of the liberalism that has infected eery inch of our society. It seems like such an easy and weak-kneed copout to just blame movies or video games.

Like I've asked in other threads: The muslim countries of the middle east have all banned western entertainment, no movies, no books, no video games, no alcohol, yet how can one explain their murderous, ultra-violent, pedophilia cultures if they don't have the evil influence of our movies and video games?

This just reflects the breakdown of our society; the reign of those who consider that there is no such things as right and wrong or that good and evil are archaic superstitions at best and non-existent as even better.

And I wonder if the breakdown of the much maligned studio system may also play a part.

In my decades of video gaming (I’m primarily an RPG/D&D/Final Fantasy style gamer) I have axe murdered, sword slashed, lazer blasted and nuked probably several hundred thousand virtual ‘humans’. Yet I haven’t been in a real life physical altercation in 20 years, much less actually killed anyone.

Now if the libs are right about the whole guns/game violence thing, I and other gamers should have long since raped, pillaged and killed a whole bunch of people.

Sooooo....why haven’t we? Because most of us still have a sense of morality, right, wrong...you know, the very things liberals intentionally breed out of people through the miseducation system. And there is a direct correlation between increasingly violent people/kids and increasingly hostile to traditional values blather spouted by liberals.

Amazing that simple traditional outlooks and morality have prevented me turning into Atila the Hun or Mr. Homes. But it would indeed seem that they have dispute me having 20+ years of being ‘influenced’ on him.

Same thing goes for the millions of ‘gun nuts’ that don’t suddenly go full auto on the wife and kids. SOMEHOW they manage to resist the evil spirit of “The Gun” taunting them at night and whispering “Kill everyone!”

I think it is safe to say that horrific murder, rape, & mayhem is as old as man himself. Today's mass murderers have nothing on the Vandals, Huns, Mongols, the Inquisition, & most despots up until the modern era. “Hatchet Man” long predates the movies & TV.

While violent films may encourage violence in some viewers, for other viewers it is a reminder that evil exists & vigilance must be maintained.

Recall that scary movie you attended as a child. Did you leave the movie thinking you were invincible, or highly vulnerable?

I don't much care for highly violent films. The daily news is violent enough. But I do enjoy a good action pic, & if the bad guys get hot lead, so much the better.

The problem is not the movies. The problem is watching Mom & Dad at home getting drunk & beating the crap out of each other, or parents too busy to bother with the kids. The problem is schools/churches that teach relativist crap rather than moral imperatives. The problem is a gov’t that encourages promiscuity, sloth, & corruption. The problem is a society that doesn't know what is right or wrong.

36
posted on 07/25/2012 8:59:24 PM PDT
by Mister Da
(The mark of a wise man is not what he knows, but what he knows he doesn't know!)

The other point I would make: Even with all the murders in the United States since the Kennedys were killed, very few people have experienced murder directly. Generally speaking, the average person hasn't experienced it, and the average director hasn't experienced it.

50 million dead by abortion, plus those killed by legal botched abortions.

But nobody knows anyone who has experienced/perpetrated such violence. < /sarc >

"... Guns don't kill people. People kill people" and all that bullsh!t from the NRA. Politicians are afraid to touch it because of the right wing. And nothing ever changes. We're living in the Wild West.

In the Wild West, you had a fighting chance. The audience in Aurora was told to leave the guns at home. The LAW ABIDING members of the audience were unarmed. Not so the villain.

I'm not sure what the solution is. I just know that the violence in this country is out of control. And the fact that guns are so easy to get is chilling. But nobody wants to blame the movies. Nobody wants to blame guns. And yet, it's so easy to buy them and there are more murders in this country than anywhere else.

If the Left was REALLY upset about gun violence, they would be up in arms over the Obama Administration's "Fast and Furious" criminal conspiracy and the subsequent coverup.

How about Bobcat Goldthwait’s recent “God Bless America” where two liberals frustrated with modern American “culture” go on a shooting rampage (including audience members who were being “rude”, a Glenn Beck substitute, and Tea Party protesters)?

They claim that violence in movies has impact but that drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, homosexuality, adultery, and foul language are not mimicked by the culture based on media portrayals of such failings.

It is we who are violent, movies are merely a reflection of human beings.

The WEIRD thing about us in the United States is that we are saturated in 'fictional' violence, and rarely exposed to 'the real thing'. While the movie violence makes us drink more pop, the real thing causes most to vomit. That is why our news is censored.

In other countries, REAL violence is shown. The blood is real, and the shots are not cropped (for America's sensitive audience).

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.